GetSalesDone launches to take the ugly out of sales contact software

If you’re a salesperson at a major company today, chances are you’re using something like Salesforce Sales Cloud or SAP to manage your accounts and contacts. And chances are that you hate them.

“Customer relationship management systems right now are monoliths,” Dexplora co-founder Hampus Jakobsson told me by phone. “Developers are filling them with lot of tools but forgetting to create software for actual people,” he said.

Jakobsson’s cure for the problem is GetSalesDone, an iPhone app that combines the power of Salesforce with the design elegance of iOS. The idea behind the app is simple: If companies want their sales people to actually use and update their CRM systems (which means better reports and forecasting), they first have to use systems that are as well-designed as the average smartphone app.

Design is something that Jakobsson knows well. Ten years ago he helped create The Astonishing Tribe, the firm that designed the interface for a little operating system called Android before being scooped up by RIM in 2010.

“We were focused on user interface back before it was even a major buzzword ,” Jakobsson said.

With CRM systems, Jakobsson’s target now is a bit different, but the underlying mission still remains the same: In in undying words of Thoreau: Simplify, Simplify!